The tongue-twisting title of Tres tristes tigres makes the reader immediately aware, at the elemental phonetic level, of language as an opaque substance, not a classically transparent and fully codified medium. Tres tristes tigres, when first published in Spain in 1967, caused a stir in the Spanish-speaking world. While some passages are readily accessible to any reader, others are obscured by Cuban vernaculars in phonetic transcription and by word-plays and allusions of many different kinds. A multiplicity of "voices" engage in narrative, dialogue and soliloquy. It is a text which fascinates as it eludes and frustrates; the over-all narrative sense is by no means obvious. (p. 333)

Language [in Tres tristes tigres] is a central theme and problem directly connected with the author's striving to capture a recent past which is still echoing in his mind: the conversational night-life of Havana shortly before the fall of the Batista régime...